Sidebar Site Navigation

UW’s Shogren Joins International Royal Panel on Sustainability

February 27, 2012 — Jay Shogren and all the other king's men and women, or more
specifically, the King's Professors, are combining their expertise and taking
aim at global sustainability.

Shogren, chair of the University of Wyoming Department of
Economics and Finance, is among 14 international scientists who have served as
Royal Guest Professors of Sweden's King Carl Gustaf XVI. All were invited and
accepted the king's invitation to take part in the Royal Professors' Symposium
on Global Sustainability, scheduled March 22 at the Royal Palace in Stockholm,
Sweden.

The prestigious professorship appointment, created in 1996
to honor the king's 50th birthday, was established to promote education and
research in environmental protection, says Shogren, who served his
professorship during 2007-2008. He says the Royal Guest Professorship has
become an important way to promote high-quality research in both the social and
scientific aspects of the environmental sciences.

The only economist in the group, Shogren will discuss the
interaction of the environment and economics, and what it will mean over the
next decade.

"People affect nature; nature affects people. In thinking
about climate risks, for instance, we need to understand better how mitigation
and adaptation choices are interlinked; how our choices affect the climate
risks; and costs of protecting humans and natural systems," Shogren writes. "By
explicitly identifying and examining feedback loops between these systems, we
can make good policy better by supplying more environmental protection at less
cost."

The conference will showcase what Sweden has done in its
leadership role in promoting environmental awareness, says Shogren, UW's
Stroock Professor of Natural Resource Conservation and Management.

"This will mark a waterline, showing how scientists from
around the globe are approaching complex environmental challenges from many
different angles," he says. "We'll share a ‘what do we know, what do we need to
know' perspective in assessing where we need to go in the future in terms of
developing and raising gross domestic products around the world without
damaging the environment."

Shogren has published many articles on the cost and benefits
on how to control climate change. He was among the elite group of scientists on
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace
Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. Professor Gabor Vali, now retired
from the UW Department of Atmospheric Science, also was a member of the panel.